Newsnight Review

I was on Newsnight Review, talking about art and climate change. We discussed the films 2012 and The Road, the exhibition Earth:art of a changing world, protest art, and the book The Magnetic North: Notes From the Arctic Circle by Sara Wheeler. Johan Hari, Simon Armitage, Jonathan Bate were on the panel aswell, which was chaired by Martha Kearney. You can watch again on iplayer here.

Interview with Mike Russell Minister for Culture, External affairs and the Constitution

Article in the Spectator

The unexpected hit of this year’s Edinburgh Book Festival was Mike Russell MSP, the SNP minister for culture, external affairs and the constitution. Surprisingly for a leading Scottish Nationalist, there was no mention of Rabbie Burns. Nor was it a populist pitch — bigging up bestselling Scottish writers like Irvine Welsh or Ian Rankin. Instead, he spoke of his love for the Chilean communist writer Pablo Neruda, the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, and even that pillar of Victorian imperialism, Alfred Lord Tennyson. Whatever you think of his politics, you can’t call Mike Russell parochial.

Click here to read the full article

Check the history before making demands

Article in the Scotsman

AT THE heart of a battle over culture, ownership and identity are 93 kings and queens, bishops and pawns, intricately carved out of walrus ivory and whales’ teeth.

The “Lewis Chessmen” were discovered on Lewis less than 200 years ago. They are thought to have been crafted in Scandinavia in the 12th century, and were probably buried for safekeeping by a merchant on his way to Ireland, although new research ventures they may have been owned by a Lewis nobleman

Scholars strike back at ‘economic impact’

Article in the Scotsman

DESPITE Labour’s promise that “education, education, education” would be its priority, when the then education minister, Charles Clarke, dismissed “the medieval concept of a community of scholars seeking truth” as “a bit dodgy” back in 2002, it became clear that the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake was judged as outmoded by our political masters.

The role of higher education has always been contested. But in recent times a war has been waged on its research remit. In the last ten years the purpose of the academy has been degraded. Universities have been turned into an instrument to improve the economy and create social cohesion. As a result, knowledge is compromised and students failed.

Who owns Culture?

WHO OWNS CULTURE?
Panel Discussion
Tuesday, 17 November 2009 6:30-8pm
LSE, New Academic Building, 54 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3LJ
THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT

The LSE Law Department and the Institute of Ideas are hosting an event with James Cuno (President and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago), Dr Tatiana Flessas (LSE Lecturer in Law with research interests in cultural property and heritage law), and Dr Maurice Davies, Deputy Director of the Museums Association. Dr Tiffany Jenkins will chair the discussion.

You can read my review of Whose Culture? by James Cuno here.

Artists, resist this propagandist agenda

Article on Spiked

ARTISTS, RESIST THIS PROPAGANDIST AGENDA

The relationship between culture and politics has never been straightforward. The arts have been used by leaders throughout history to bolster their status and authority, and to lend weight to concepts such as ‘the nation’. Artists, in turn, have used their talents to promote different agendas and to take sides in conflicts and revolutions. But, in recent times, this relationship has been formalised, made more explicit and prescriptive.

After the failures of the ‘war on terror’, politicians are now elevating the role of culture in international policymaking. And far from rejecting these advances, many cultural leaders – eager for affirmation and purpose – have embraced them, arguing that it is about time the positive impact of the arts on foreign relations was recognised.

Click here to read the full article

Critical thinking

Article in the THES

I spend every August in Edinburgh, immersed in the seven festivals that all take place in one month. Literature, theatre, comedy, music and art are all on show. But although one is presented with a feast of cultural riches, one question is left unanswered every year: what is exceptional and why?

There are the newspaper reviews, of course, the star system of the broadsheets and quick-fire fisking on the blogs. But much of it is short and simplistic, often nothing more than PR puff.

A good critical article – one that does more than repeat the story or deconstruct its meaning and reflects more broadly on artistic merit – is hard to find. That’s a problem, both for audiences who want recommendations, but also for a wider assessment of the works on show and their contribution to culture.

Click here to read the full article.

The Arts Council: the case for the defence

Article in the Spectator on the Arts Council.

The Arts Council is at risk. After over a decade of questionable goals and bureaucratic funding requirements, as well as the mismanagement of a series of cuts, voices have started to call for its abolition.

The past ten years have been peculiar times for the arts. Under the Labour government pots of money were thrown at culture. But strings came with this funding, requiring art to serve political ends. While there has been cash it has been less for culture and more for schemes promoting social inclusion, community issues and urban renewal.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE…

BNP’s views need to be challenged, not banned

Article in the Scotsman

BNP’s views need to be challenged, not banned

UNLESS you have been living on a different planet for the past month, you will know that British National Party leader Nick Griffin is to be a panellist on BBC1’s Question Time tomorrow night.

The planned addition to the political discussion programme of a member of a party with a fascist pedigree has created a storm of controversy. Many people, including Labour MP Peter Hain, argue that the BNP should be barred from appearing on the show.

Mark Thompson, the corporation’s director-general, has rejected Hain’s argument. Thompson stated that it was their duty “to scrutinise and hold to account all elected representatives” and that the BBC would do so “with due impartiality”.

Thompson is right. Inviting an elected MEP on to the programme should happen because we live in a democratic society, regardless of his vile opinions. The cascade of calls for censorship is illiberal.

The suggestion that members of a political party be barred from this broadcast calls into question everybody’s democratic rights.

Whether we like it or not, the BNP is a legitimate organisation. It has won two seats in the European Election and has just under 60 councillors across the UK.

As long as we operate as a representative democracy, the voters’ choice should be represented in the public sphere, whether in parliament or on the nation’s broadcaster.

Peter Hain – and others protesting against this airtime for the BNP – has an inflated view of Griffin’s powers of persuasion and towering intellect, and far too little faith in their own ability to convince others. What are they scared of?

Do they believe that the public has only to hear a few words spoken by Griffin and they will morph into a racist mob?

This treats the viewer – that’s you and me, by the way – as if we were completely gullible. The censor treats us, not as autonomous beings with rational thought, but as children who need special protection from backward ideas, by an elite who decides what we can and cannot hear.

And if people do watch and agree with Griffin, surely we should use the democratic process to mount an argument to win them over, rather than mount a boycott to silence the debate.

As the philosopher John Stuart Mill once argued, no opinion, however false, should be stifled, partly because the truth is made all the clearer for “collision with error”.

Freedom of expression is not something that you only give to people who you agree with. Just as importantly, free speech must be upheld for people who you don’t agree with.

Nor does free speech mean accepting all views as equally valid. It means having all opinions out in the open so we can challenge the ones we find distasteful and argue for those that we think are right.

It is only by debating and exposing the poor ideas of the British National Party that they can be defeated in public and at elections.

We cannot challenge bigoted ideas if we ban or hide them. Doing so lets the sentiments fester underground.

Indeed, while the BNP remains a rump of an organisation that has won very little influence in elections, making up as it does less than half of 1 per cent of local councillors, the obsession with silencing Nick Griffin has won the party undeserved front page headlines for weeks on end, and has given it the appearance of a protest movement.

The British National Party is a relatively small, incoherent and ineffective organisation, but the centring of politics and the inability of the other parties to win new members and supporters has meant that the party has become more influential than it deserves.

At the last election it won two seats in the European Parliament, but only due to the collapse of the Labour vote.

The influence of the BNP can be seen as a product of mainstream political failure. It has become a symbol of disaffection amongst voters, rather than an endorsement of any of the party’s racist policies.

That is why its votes can sharply rise and fall from one election to another, despite what the party does or says.

Not that we should be complacent, or ignore the BNP. We should address its arguments. This party keys into concerns that should be tackled in public.

And, just as we take on the BNP, we should scrutinise the policies of the other parties.

Illiberal and nasty attitudes to immigrants are not the sole preserve of the far right.

As someone who is for open borders and the free movement of people, I would like to see all the policies on immigration of all parties challenged in open debate.

Labour’s immigration policies are causing unnecessary havoc and harm, preventing immigrants from entering the country or moving around.

Bail for Immigration Detainees, an independent charity that challenges immigration detention in the UK, estimates that 2,000 children of asylum seekers are detained each year in detention centres.

They are the only children in Britain who can be locked up indefinitely without having committed a crime.

The Scottish National Party has, quite rightly, spoken out in the past against the points-based UK visa system, claiming it splits families apart because of the threat of deportation for family members who have been refused residency.

This system is due not to the BNP, but to the immigration policy of the Labour government.

The immigration issue needs to be prised open, not shut down. All political parties need to be put under pressure to account for their policies on the issues of race.

Calls to ban the BNP from broadcasting on the BBC makes us look scared of this shoddy party’s ideas, when we can easily confront them.

This is not about the right of a collection of far-right cranks to have their time on the telly. It is about the right of the rest of us to make up our own minds and argue back.

Museums for world peace?

Museums for World Peace?
Wednesday 21 October 2009, 18.30–21.00
Tate Britain, London

Cultural diplomacy’ is in vogue. The idea is that museums, galleries, libraries, art, theatre and music can play a critical role in international relations. The think tank Demos recommends these institutions address terrorism and conflict in the Middle East, and work to enhance relations with diasporas. Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, argues that the museum, its staff and collections can play a role in state-building and promoting peace and stability internationally, as well as helping those who visit in Bloomsbury to understand and appreciate other cultures. It is argued that in the context of a world that is experiencing a dramatic resurgence in nationalism and sectarian violence, encyclopaedic museums can play a positive role in encouraging understanding and tolerance between cultures.

But can culture really ease international conflict and foster tolerance? Or does looking to old objects to find messages of tolerance for today meaning obscuring the contemporary reasons behind conflicts? Does assigning cultural institutions such a role risk undermining their more traditional goals, or even compromise their scholarly objectivity? What kind of relationships should Western cultural institutions have with their counterparts abroad, and to what purpose? What role, if any, can and should museums play on the international stage?

Speakers:
Dr. Stephen Deuchar, Director of Tate Britain
Dr. Tiffany Jenkins, sociologist; Director of the Arts & Society programme at the Institute of Ideas
Jonathan Jones, Art Critic of the Guardian
Andrea Rose, Director of Visual Arts at the British Council
Tim Stanley, Senior Curator, Middle East at the V&A, as well as the principal author of Palace and Mosque: Islamic Art from the Middle East
Claire Fox, Director of the Institute of Ideas and panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze

Click here to book tickets